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30 June, 2008

The coolest thing ever!

This thing will tell you every single flight, where it is, and what its altitude is, in close-to-real-time! Super cool.

For example, the tagged plane I highlighted is Alaska Air Flight 547 from Long Beach to Seattle, and it is a Boing MD-83.

Fun times. For older flight data, you can also watch "replays" of the day's flights, and at various spots on the map it shows noise data, telling you how many decibels of noise were created as a plane passed near the meter. In lots of areas around, and south of downtown, there are routinely events in the 65-70dB range. This is compared to "normal conversation level". For comparison sake, the noise level inside most passenger cars, while driving, is about 85dB and the noise level while using a lawnmower is 107dB. Of course, if the airplanes are making "conversation level" noise, then it would stand to reason that having a conversation when one is flying over Capitol Hill would be slightly distracting.